Last week I spoke about the theory behind Edgerank. This week I’m going to delve into the “behind the scenes” workings I did and my findings. Please note that I have looked at these stats for 7 clients that range in fan numbers, post frequency and different audiences, and the findings are similar to a point but each have their own nuances which indicates that every fan page is different and my findings should not be taken out of context and automatically assumed for any business page. That being said, 80% of what I have indicated below was true for all the pages.

I’ve specifically selected one of my clients business page as the case study because of their targeted and highly engaged audience which gives them the most chance of being a successful page without spending money. They have a fan base of 6000 and talk directly to consumers yet their product is sold via chain stores countrywide to consumers so they have no promotions on the page. They do offer a competition which, incidentally, gets them the least traffic, reach and interaction on the page. I chose them because it was important for me to see what purely organic information based pages can achieve via Facebook business pages.

My adaptations:

● I stopped posting from Bufferapp because, although not conclusive, there seemed to be evidence that Facebook penalised brands that used third party apps to post. Braces in a belt … I took the safe route.

● I stopped using Crowdbooster to tell me when to post to Facebook and just spread my posts out evenly throughout the day. At least one of these posts was within the time slot recommended by Crowdbooster in any event.

● I posted with a minimum of 4 hours between posts so as not to cannibalise the spot light from my previous post.

● I only posted 2-3 times per day.

● I did a good spread of variations WRT types of posts. I posted pictures, albums, status updates of varying lengths and links through to websites for a curated feel.

● I switched the posting type around to different time slots to measure various post types at various times.

● I promoted strategic posts that drove traffic to our website.

My workings:

● Crowdbooster’s suggestion on when to post updates.

● Organic post with the maximum “% reach” every day, recording the type and time of post as well as the type of interaction i.e. number of likes, comments or shares.

● Organic post with the maximum interaction every day, recording the type and time of post as well as the type of interaction i.e. number of likes, comments or shares.

● I assigned points to likes (1), comments (3) and shares (5) in order to properly gauge what should have resulted in the most reach. Note: It did not matter how I changed the points around, my result was not different.

My findings:

● The times that Crowdbooster suggested I post was only correct approximately 20% of the time.

● My organic reach did not increase because I posted via Facebook instead of BufferApp, in fact it went down from the highest being 24% on BufferApp to 17% posting directly from Facebook.

● Promoting a few posts increased my organic reach i.e. posts I did not promote, from the highest being 24% on BufferApp to 32% on Facebook. I have not posted from BufferApp during this testing phase at all so cannot comment on whether it would be higher than 32%.

● Posts with the highest reach only had the highest interaction 50% of the time.

● The post interaction (points) didn’t have anything to do with % reach. As an example, two posts that got 42% reach had 806 points vs 102 points.

● Promoted posts got us a maximum reach of 42% on a fan base of 6000. Promoting posts seems to increase your organic reach, even if it does nothing for your Edgerank score on Edgerankchecker.

● Edgerank dropped us one point after we promoted posts.

● Edgerank then took five days to register an increase of four points after our promoted posts quadrupled interaction on those specific posts.

● We held the Edgerank increase for two days.

● Edgerank then took three days to drop us back down to where we first started.

● Our promoted posts since the only four point increase and then decrease have yet to register on Edgerankchecker at all.

From the raw data above you can already draw many of your own conclusions. I’ve looked at all the findings and I’ll be sharing my conclusions and insights with you next week.